We had that whole Saturday in Brugge.  The first thing we did was take the car back.  We were a bit concerned because of the two tyres we’d had to have replaced, and we weren’t sure if the hire company might consider them not up to their standard and charge us for new ones.  In particular, we couldn’t get rid of the notification on the dashboard to reset tyre pressure, and we figured if they could see that it might cause a problem. As it happened we did manage to remove it, and the tyres were fine.   We had a bit of a wait for a cab back to town, but it all went fine.  We were then ready to have our breakfast in The Pand, downstairs in the cafe part of the hotel, with a window out to the street, where we could see runners going past in the triathlon.  It was very nice and we lingered over the coffee for a while.  Eventually we got ourselves together and went out into Bruges to check things out in a bit more detail than yesterday’s overview.

We walked over towards the main square again, this time stopping in a few cool shops we had noticed the evening before.  There were a couple of great tapestry shops, and we found in both large versions of the cushion cover design we had bought in Lincoln cathedral, the ‘Mon Seul Desir’ tapestry from the Lady and the Unicorn series that resides at the Cluny Museum in Paris.  We had a good look at both with a view to perhaps deciding which we liked best and buying it the next day.  There was also an extremely cool household gadget shop which we couldn’t resist going into a couple of times!  We went into the ‘Belfry’ building, which is said to have housed the very first stock exchange in Europe, back in the 14th century.  Its tower is a symbol of Brugge and dominates the skyline. You can climb to the top, but we saw the queue, and how slowly it was moving, and decided it would be a very long business so we passed.  In the adjacent square to the main square is the town hall, a gorgeous building.

We did a lot of poking around in the squares, and then went and had a waffle and coffee in the square where the town hall is which they call the Burg, at the Tom Pouce Cafe Restaurant. Yum! We hung out there for a while and then continued exploring the medieval streets of Brugge.  We found a very nice looking Thai restaurant, Nakhonthai, which we earmarked for that evening’s dinner.  Across the street from that there’s a very nice objet d’art shop, Lace Jewel, where Jen bought some very cute carved silver-gold miniature wooden shoes, which look great by the fireplace in the upstairs living room.  On the way back to the hotel late in the afternoon we dropped back into the tapestry shops to have another look at the tapestries, but not before getting caught in a colossal rain storm which, even with our umbrella, caused us to seek shelter in a doorway with a lot of other people not so fortunately equipped.  It was bucketing!!

Then it was back to the hotel to take a break and get ready for dinner. On the way out we availed ourselves of a couple of delicious complementary champagne cocktails from the hotel, which we got as part of our Small Luxury Hotels subscription.  Very nice! We’d made a booking at the Thai place, even though they didn’t even ask for our name, and when we went there there was no trouble getting a table.  It was great Thai, just like you get at home.  If anything it was a bit more nicely decorated inside than you get in a lot of places in Oz. They had some very good looking stone reliefs on the wall, or at least they looked like stone.  It was a nice evening.  Afterwards we had a stroll around the Markt, the main square, and on the way back to the hotel the full moon was rising above the buildings. Fantastic.

Brugge